Ben Affleck uncorks NSFW Deflategate rant on Bill Simmons' HBO show

They say time loves a hero, but it's pretty hard to find one in the lengthy saga that is Deflategate, America's least-favorite PSI-related NFL scandal.

Maybe it's not too late. The hero we need could be Ben Affleck (he's already playing Batman!), who appeared on Bill Simmons' new HBO show "Any Given Wednesday" and went off on an absolute tirade against the NFL over Deflategate.

Simmons basically mentioned the "D" word, asking Affleck if it was the "ultimate Boston sports story," and it completely set off Affleck into this Boston-accent heavy, f-bomb-filled rant. There are several points where Simmons tries to jump in and Affleck basically isn't having it.

Affleck started off the rant ripping the NFL for punishing Brady the same sort of length a MLB player would get for steroids (and then veered into the NFL's steroid policy) before pointing out getting in trouble for what your friends do and giving up your cell phone isn't a wise plan.

Deflategate is the ultimate bulls--t f--ing outrage of sports, ever. It's so f--ing stupid, that I can't believe ... You realize they gave him a suspension for a quarter of the regular season, which would be the equivalent of suspending a baseball player for 40 f--ing days. 40 [game] days to be exact. Which is what they do when you get busted taking steroids. And by the way, if the NFL had a real testing, it really knew how to test for steroids and HGH in the NFL, there'd be no f--ing NFL. So instead, what they did was suspend Tom Brady for four days for not giving them his f--ing cell phone and for having a friend who calls himself 'The Deflator.'

If I got in trouble for all the things my friends called themselves, I would be finished. You want to give a guy -- because he doesn't give you his cell phone -- a punishment? I would never give the organization as leak-prone as the NFL my f--ing cell phone, so you could just look through my emails and listen to my voicemail.

Then Affleck explained why he wouldn't want the NFL to have his phone.

So first thing they're going to do is leak this s--. I don't know, maybe it's funny, lovely sex messages from his wife. Maybe it's just friendly messages from his wife. Maybe Tom Brady is so f--ing classy and such a f--ing gentleman that he doesn't want people to know that he may have reflected on his real opinion of some of his co-workers. Guys he plays with, guys he plays against, his real feelings -- I wouldn't want guys who I didn't think were very good to know I didn't think they were very good. I wouldn't want guys who I thought were great to know I thought they were great. I would want to keep my opinions to myself.

Surely his opinions about professional football are contained in his emails and his texts and his f--ing cell phone. Not giving your telephone -- they're not the FBI, you're not required, this isn't f--ing federal subpoena, you're not required to turn over your bank records. It's outrageous.

Also outrageous to Affleck? Giants quarterback Eli Manning being featured in a 2013 article in the New York Times about how long it takes to get his footballs ready for a game.

Look at Eli. Eli did a whole layout with the New York Times, a whole cute spread two years ago about what goes into an Eli football. It was like a lot of massage, a lot of sandpaper, a lot of grit and a lot of grass. The whole f--ing thing was about how he's got to scuff it like Phil Neikro before he has to put it in a game. No one ever stopped to think there was something wrong with that. They printed it, it ran, everyone loved it, Goodell thought it was charming!

And now they're saying that taking footballs from a warm place into a cold place and finding out there might be a WHISPER less air pressure in those balls ...

Have we covered this from the scope of Deflategate yet? Because, uh, it's actually a really fair point. Read the fourth and fifth paragraphs in that story. Oh yeah and Affleck is out there curating sources.

They didn't measure it correctly. I talked to f--ing pro football players across the board and they thought it was bulls--t. Aaron Rodgers came right out and said, 'I like a big ball, I like to over-inflate a ball, don't even investigate me, I like to do it.'"

Ultimately he appears to think Deflategate is a giant conspiracy crafted by the NFL league office and is, well, not really happy with Roger Goodell about the whole thing. Simmons, who was fired from ESPN in part because he criticized Goodell, appeared quite thrilled about the whole "doesn't have the integrity" part of the segment.

This is a conspiracy of people working inside the NFL who all come from organizations where Tom Brady whipped their ass over the last 10-15 years. So there's guys who worked for the f--ing Jets and Broncos and everybody else, who are now going 'Get him! Hang him!' because they have some slight, flimsy f--ing pretense. And Tom is so classy ...

It's a f--ing ridiculous smear campaign. And Goodell now doesn't have the integrity, I'd want to say, frankly ... doesn't have the decency to just say this is stupid, I was wrong. This is ridiculous. We're running our greatest player ever through this mill of humiliation and shame which is totally unwarranted for the sake of our own bruised egos and embarrassment to paper over our mismanagement.

We haven't done anything to address this crisis in domestic violence in the NFL but the f--ing football better not be 8 percent lighter and if we find out it is, you're gone for four games.

Whew. Well then. You can watch the clip in all its expletive-laden glory here and, seriously, be aware there are some NSFW words used if that wasn't already clear.

Deflategate is tiresome at this point, with, as Simmons noted, most of the battle involving legal stuffs and no longer being about Goodell vs. Brady. For at least three minutes or so on Wednesday night, however, it was interesting again thanks to Affleck.